Chop:
I was born in 1980 so I love most things from the 80’s, mainly movies and TV shows.
Imagine my excitement and fear when I see a commercial for the remake of one of my all time favorite shows MacGyver.
The commercial looks good and I look forward to taking a test drive on this televisual feast.
For those of you who don’t know MacGyver of old… slap yourself.
MacGyver was an agent of the Phoenix Foundation, I am not exactly sure what their purpose was but he got to go all over the world getting into trouble and had to use his mind and minimal equipment to get himself out of said trouble.
MacGyver did not use guns, he did not rail against guns like your modern leftist, he just did not like them because his family was not responsible and did not teach him proper gun safety as a child and due to that MacGyver killed his friend.
If he had used guns, the show probably would not have been as interesting, though.
If you haven’t seen it, you should.
The new MacGyver has some similarities to the old show but there are some differences too.
They tried to make the new MacGyver look similar to the Macgyver played by Richard Dean Anderson of Stargate SG-1 fame with the hair and the bomber jacket but this MacGyver works in a team environment where the old Mac worked alone mostly.
They gave Mac a background of MIT and ex-military EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal).
The team consists of Angus MacGyver, Jack Dalton and Nikki.
The team makes sense as MacGyver is kind of an analog guy in a digital world.
Jack Dalton is a character from the Old MacGyver but in the old series he spent as much time getting Mac into trouble as he did helping Mac out. In the new series, Jack is ex-Delta Force who has no issues with using guns and is also useful in helping Mac out of jams.
Nikki is new and she it the Operations/Comms/Hacker member of the group.
The leader is still named Thornton but rather than a pudgy white guy it is now a far more attractive woman.
As mentioned above Richard Dean Anderson played the Original MacGyver and you may also know him from Stargate SG-1.
Bruce McGill played the original Jack Dalton and he has played parts in several shows and movies over the years, notably: Animal House, Ride Along, and Law Abiding Citizen among several others.
Dana Elcar played Pete Thornton in the original series but he was not in much after MacGyver because he started losing his sight during the show and passed away in 2005.
Lucas Till plays the new incarnation of Angus MacGyver, besides playing Mac, Till was in Battle Los Angeles and has been in several X-Men movies as Alex Summers/Havok.
George Eads plays the newer more badass version of Jack Dalton. Eads was on CSI as Nick Stokes.
The only thing I know Sandrine Holt from is Dr. Exner in Fear the Walking Dead but she is the supervisor in MacGyver as Patricia Thornton.
Tristin Mays who plays Riley Davis has not really been in much that I know, some Vampire Diaries is the only title I knew but she is dreamy something fierce.
On to Season 1 Episode 1: The Rising
Warning: If you have not seen it and plan to, there are spoilers after this point!
MacGyver works for a government agency called DXS that not even the CIA knows about. I know they are spies but I do not get why they are super, ultra, mega black ops when they aren’t even in the killing business.
Before I really get into this I just have to say…
VINNIE JONES IS IN THIS EPISODE!
I assume he is only in one episode but the fact that he is in episode one is awesome.
In this episode, Team MacGyver if going to a sweet party to get their hands on some sort of weapon that they hear will be auctioned off.
Que the Macgyverisms with a new twist, while MacGyver is sciencing his way through every problem, the ingredients used for each task are shown on the screen, this is both awesome and a huge pain in the ass. It is awesome so long as MacGyver isn’t talking but if you are like me and have a tendency to read everything… when he is talking you only get pieces of both.
The plan goes awry and Nikki ends up getting shot by none other than VINNIE JONES!
Three months later the weapon comes back into play and it is up to Team MacGyver to go get it.
In the scenes 3 months later we find out that Mac has a roommate who apparently works at a fast food joint, I don’t know what MacGyver’s cover job it supposed to be but they have a SWEET pad for half of the tenants making minimum wage.
Apparently, the weapon was an ancient virus that was released due to fracking in Greenland. I knew it wouldn’t take long for it to be something like this… I hope every episode isn’t linked to some Mother Earth Gaia issue.
It is through this that they end up with Riley Davis who helps them through the ups and downs of catching Vinnie and the rest of the Bad News Bears.
I do not know if I would say it is as good as the original MacGyver but I will certainly be watching it again.
I read several reviews on it before it aired and they weren’t all very glowing, talking about plot twists you saw from miles away.
Most plot twists anymore are pretty obvious but I do not think MacGyver did as bad of a job as the snob critics said.
The MacGyver nerd in me noticed the at least one Easter Egg they added to the first episode, let me know if you noticed it.
In trying to not give away this entire episode scene for scene, which is exactly how I took notes for it, there are a lot of things I would like to say that even if I didn’t tell you what was happening you would know exactly what was going on. I may come back to this post in a month or two and talk about the things that I liked and the things that pissed me off about this episode with some super, ultra, mega black ops spoilers but all in all, it was worth the watch.
Due to time constraints and wanting to get this out before the second episode comes out, I was not able to include my cowriter’s reviews of the first episode but check back in a few days and they should be added.
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